November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy Is Assassinated

November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson becomes President.

With the 1964 Presidential election coming up, and the 1960 election having been close, Kennedy wanted to be sure of as many States as he could. And, with a split in the Democratic Party in the State of Texas, a State then with 25 Electoral Votes, he knew that was a State he had to hang onto.

He visited San Antonio and Houston the day before, settled for the night in Fort Worth, and made the short flight to Dallas the next morning. He rode in an open car, a 1961 Lincoln Continental limousine, with the protective "bubble top" removed, so the crowds along the motorcade route could see him.

He was in the back seat, with his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, who was wearing a pink suit, complete with a pillbox hat. In the middle seat were the Governor of Texas, John Connally, and his wife, Nellie. In the front seat were 2 Secret Service Agents: William Greer, the driver, and Clint Hill.

In the car behind them sat Vice President Johnson, his wife Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson, and Senator Ralph Yarborough. (Yarborough's wife, Opal, was not there.) Yarborough, a liberal, and Connally, more conservative on some issues, were seen as the reason behind the intra-State Party split. The other Senate seat for Texas, which Johnson had held until the 1960 election, had been won in a special election by a Republican, John Tower. He was not present.

There was concern that there might be trouble in Dallas: A month earlier, Adlai Stevenson, America's Ambassador to the United Nations, was hit with picket signs on a visit to the city. JFK told Jackie it was "real nut country."

But the reception for the Kennedys seemed to be wonderful. There was at least one Confederate flag along the route, but it was mostly American flags and signs of support, including a few for Jackie.

At 12:30 PM, Central Standard Time -- 1:30 Eastern -- as the limo went down Elm Street into Dealey Plaza, about to head under a highway and railroad underpass near Union Station, on its way to the Trade Mart where JFK was to attend a luncheon and deliver a speech, Nellie Connally turned to JFK, and said, "You can't say Dallas hasn't been kind to you today." And he said, "No, I suppose you can't."

(For the number of shots, I'm sticking to the official story, even though, like millions of Americans, I am not entirely convinced of it.)

At that moment, the kindness stopped. A shot rang out. It missed the car completely, and struck a curb, breaking off a piece of concrete that cut a bystander, James Tague, on his face. Tague was a 27-year-old car salesman, originally from Indiana, and later claimed that it was the second shot that wounded him. He published a book, claiming that Johnson was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK, so he could become President himself. He has not been the only person to suggest this, but it seems incredibly unlikely.

A second shot was fired. It hit Kennedy in the back, drilled through his body, and exited through his throat. Some witnesses said they heard him yell, "My God, I'm hit!" But the nature of his wounds calls his continued ability to speak into question. Connally, having turned around after hearing the first shot, was hit in the back by the same bullet. He yelled out, "My God, they're going to kill us all!"

This shot has been called "the magic bullet" by people who don't believe the lone-gunman theory that was later accepted by the Warren Commission. They have used "The Zapruder Film," a silent home movie recorded by Abraham Zapruder, a local clothing manufacturer, to back up their claim. But the wounds caused by that bullet can be accounted for by the varying positions, both horizontal and vertical, of the car's seats.

A third shot was fired. It struck Kennedy in the head, sending it back and to the left. This is the key for people who don't believe the lone-gunman theory: If the shot had come from behind, it would have caused Kennedy to fall forward. Therefore, it had to come from the front and to the right, probably fired from behind a white fence atop what became known as the "grassy knoll" at Dealey Plaza.

Dealey Plaza. The "grassy knoll" is roughly

in the center of the picture, with the white fence behind it.

(The Plaza was named for George Bannerman Dealey, the publisher of The Dallas Morning News from 1926 to his death in 1946.)

Greer sped off to the nearest hospital, which was Parkland Hospital, 4 miles to the northwest. There was nothing the doctors, led by Robert N. McClelland, could do. Father Oscar Huber, a priest at the hospital, gave him the last rites. It was the 4th time he had received them.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was pronounced dead at 1:00 PM -- 2:00 Eastern. NBC was the first network to announce his death to the public, with Frank McGee saying so at 2:35. Walter Cronkite of CBS followed, 3 minutes later.

After being told of JFK's death, Johnson ordered that he be taken back to Air Force One, which was sitting on the tarmac at Love Field, Dallas' main airport at the time. Sarah T. Hughes, whom JFK had appointed a federal Judge on LBJ's recommendation, administered the Oath of Office at 2:39 (3:39 Eastern). She remains the only woman ever to swear a President into office.

Johnson insisted on having the swearing-in photographed, and that Jackie be by his side, to show the peaceful transfer of power. Cecil W. Stoughton, then the official White House photographer, would win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography for his picture. There is no film of it, although there is a very scratchy audio recording.

Most versions of this photo are in black & white.

This one is probably colorized.

At 1:50 (2:50), Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theatre. He had been identified as the shooter from the nearby Texas School Book Depository, and had also killed a Dallas police officer, Patrolman J.D. Tippit.

Someone once wrote up a series of "Lincoln-Kennedy Coincidences," some of them erroneous or misleading. (Kennedy did have a secretary named Evelyn Lincoln, who did warn him not to go to Dallas, but Lincoln did not have a secretary named Kennedy, and no one warned him against going to Ford's Theatre.) To me, the most interesting one is that John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in a theater, and was caught in a storehouse (for tobacco on a farm); while Oswald shot Kennedy from the window of a storehouse, and was arrested in a theater. And no one seems to bring up the fact that the car that Kennedy was riding in was a Lincoln.

The murder sent the world into mourning. Everything else, including sports, became secondary to laying the fallen President to rest, and bringing his killer to justice.

Within 48 hours of the assassination, Oswald, 24 years old -- born on October 18, 1939, the same day as Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Mike Ditka -- would be also be murdered. Those who believe he acted alone, and those who believe he couldn't have, each have evidence to back up their theory, but neither has enough information to make it conclusive. There was no trial. We may never know for sure whether he did it alone, or at all.

What we do know is that the assassination of John F. Kennedy still haunts this country. His generation, who grew up in the Great Depression and fought in World War II, never got over it. Their children, who were inspired to public service by JFK, were emotionally scarred for life as well.

The fact that all of Johnson's subsequent achievements as President have been clouded by his failure in the Vietnam War makes it all worse: There is the belief that Kennedy would have handled Vietnam better, and we would have been spared the worst of that war, and spared the Presidency of Richard Nixon, and Watergate, and so many other things.

But we'll never know. The events of November 22, 1963 insured that.

With the Vice Presidency vacant, the next man in the line of succession was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John McCormack, like Kennedy a Bostonian. He was 73 years old, and looked older. Next was the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Carl Hayden of Arizona. And he was 86. Next was the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk.

John W. McCormack

This potential succession situation led to the proposal, and by 1967 the ratification, of what became the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, allowing for the replacement of the Vice President for the remainder of the Presidential term, and also for a Presidential inability to serve short of death.

Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald, died in prison in 1967. Abraham Zapruder died in 1970. President Lyndon Johnson died in 1973. Father Oscar Huber died in 1975. Agent William Greer, the driver, died in 1985. So did Judge Sarah Hughes. Governor John Connally died in 1993. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy died in 1994. Senator Ralph Yarborough died in 1996. Nellie Connally died in 2006. Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson, the new First Lady, died in 2007. Photographer Cecil Stoughton died in 2008. James Tague, the 3rd wounded man, died in 2014. Dr. Robert McClelland died in 2019. Clint Hill, the Secret Service Agent who kept Jackie in the car, was the last living person in the car. As of November 22, 2022, he is still alive. (UPDATE: He died in 2025.)

The Lincoln Continental limousine is now in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, outside Detroit. So is the chair in which Abraham Lincoln was sitting in, in Ford's Theatre in Washington, when he was assassinated.

Within 5 years, his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, would also be assassinated. These murders were mentioned as part of the actions claimed by the Devil, played by Mick Jagger, in The Rolling Stones' 1968 song "Sympathy for the Devil."

The last brother, Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy, lived until 2009. All three brothers are now buried at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. 

*

November 22, 1963 was a Friday. This was also the day that A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records, a.k.a. The Phil Spector Christmas Album, was released. I have a separate entry for that. Also that day, With the Beatles was released in Britain, later repackaged in the U.S. was Meet the Beatles.

In addition, the pilot episode of the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was being filmed, on the 31st birthday of its star, Robert Vaughn, when the cast and crew received word of the assassination, at which point they stopped, resuming on Tuesday the 26th, after the funeral. The show premiered on NBC on September 22, 1964.

British authors Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis also died on November 22, 1963. Hardly anyone in America noticed.

One more weird thing: Hugh Millen was born that day. Millen played 10 seasons in the NFL, mostly as a backup quarterback. In 1987, he played for the Los Angeles Rams, who represent the city where Kennedy was nominated for President, and where Bobby was assassinated in 1968.

In 1991 and 1992, Millen played for the New England Patriots, who represent the Kennedys' hometown, Boston. In 1993, he played for the Dallas Cowboys, who represent the city where Kennedy died. And the last team to cut him, in 1996, was the New Orleans Saints, who represent the city that was home to one of the major theories about a conspiracy as to Kennedy's assassination.

Also born that day: English soccer defender and manager Tony Mowbray; Brian Robbins, who played Eric Mardian on the ABC sitcom Head of the Class before becoming a major executive at Paramount Pictures; and Kennedy Polamalu, a Samoan whose parents named him for the President, and who went on to become a coach in both college and pro football -- including pulling off the rare feat of having been the offensive coordinator at both Los Angeles arch-rivals, USC (where he was a running back) and UCLA. He is the uncle of Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame safety Troy Polamalu.

The memorials to Kennedy came quickly after his death. Many schools that had previously been named after towns, or other people, were renamed for him, including Central High School in Paterson, New Jersey. Also named for him in New Jersey were high schools in the Iselin section of Woodbridge and in Willingboro. (The latter has since been closed.)

John F. Kennedy High Schools also opened in the Marble Hill section of The Bronx, making him the most recent President to be honored with a high school named for him in New York City; Cheektowaga, New York, a suburb of Buffalo; Glenmont, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Los Angeles, Fremont and La Palma, California; Burien, Washington.

Statues of him stand outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston, the Puerto Rico Capitol in San Juan. Memorials to him were dedicated in Montreal, Tegucigalpa (the capital of Honduras), London, Barcelona, Jerusalem, Melbourne, and West Berlin: The square in front of their City Hall, where he told a crowd of 500,000, "Ich bin ein Berliner," was named John-F-Kennedy-Platz.

In 1960, while his campaign motorcade came down Broad Street in Newark, New Jersey, my father, then 17 years old and having just started college, shook hands with Kennedy. Roughly across Broad Street from that spot, at the southern tip of Military Park, stands a column topped by a bust of Kennedy. Another bust was dedicated at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. Both were dedicated in 1965.

The aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-67), a.k.a. the Big John, was in service from 1968 to 2007, in service longer than its namesake lived. A replacement carrier (CVN-79) was launched in 2019, but has not yet entered official service. (UPDATE: It is currently scheduled to do so in March 2027.)

Since 1964, his portrait has appeared on the U.S. half-dollar (50-cent) coin. Idlewild Airport in New York, Philadelphia Municipal Stadium, and the Delaware and Maryland sections of Interstate 95, which he had dedicated just a few days before his death, were renamed for him.

Interstate 190, connecting O'Hare International Airport to Chicago, is named the John F. Kennedy Expressway. A bridge of Interstate 65 over the Ohio River, connecting Louisville, Kentucky with Indiana, was named the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge. U.S. Route 75 in Omaha, Nebraska was named the Kennedy Freeway. And the Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was named for him. From 1964 to 1973, the cape itself was named Cape Kennedy. A bridge connecting Miami and Miami Beach was named the John F. Kennedy Causeway.

On October 22, 1979, his Presidential Library opened on the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts, at Columbia Point. In 1982, the stop on Boston's subway Red Line, serving the campus and the Library, was renamed "JFK/UMass."

W. Willard Wirtz was the last surviving member of Kennedy's Cabinet, serving him and Johnson as Secretary of Labor from 1962 to 1969. He lived until 2010.

JFK remains the most recent President to represent Massachusetts, although Governor Michael Dukakis and Senator John Kerry have since been nominated for the office, and each has lost the general election.

*

On that Friday, for the 1st time in their 17-year history, the NBA's New York Knicks postponed a game. They were supposed to play the Detroit Pistons at the old Madison Square Garden. Indeed, there would be no games in the NBA that night, nor in the NHL. All were postponed. And, of course, it was after the baseball season, so there were no MLB games to postpone. The Los Angeles Dodgers had completed their 4-game World Series sweep over the Yankees on October 6 at Dodger Stadium.

The Knicks-Pistons game was pushed back to the following night, and the Knicks won, 108-99. Their next postponement would be on November 9, 1965, the day of the great blackout.

The 1963 Army-Navy Game had been scheduled for Saturday, November 23. It was postponed for 2 weeks, until December 7. With eventual Heisman Trophy winner, and eventual Dallas Cowboys quarterback, Roger Staubach leading them, Navy won, 21-15 at Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia. The following year, the huge 105,000-seat horseshoe in South Philadelphia was renamed John F. Kennedy Stadium.

Most college games were postponed. But 1 game, scheduled for that night, went ahead as planned. As you might guess, it was in the South: North Carolina State beat Wake Forest, 42-0 at Riddick Stadium in Raleigh, North Carolina. Attendance: 15,200, out of a capacity of 23,000. The Nebraska-Oklahoma rivalry, set for the 23rd, went on as scheduled at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. Nebraska won 29-20.

JFK's alma mater, Harvard, was supposed to play arch-rival Yale at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut on November 23. It was postponed until the following week, and Yale won, 20-6.

You might expect the rivalry game between Texas and Texas A&M, the 2 biggest college football teams in the State where the assassination took place, to be postponed. In fact, neither team was scheduled for November 23. Each team's next game was against the other, and was already set for the 28th, Thanksgiving Day. Texas, then ranked Number 1 in the country, held off a great upset effort by the Aggies, scoring 12 points in the 4th quarter to win 15-13. The Longhorns went on to beat Number 2 Navy in the Cotton Bowl -- in Dallas, on January 1, 1964 -- and won the National Championship.

The Iron Bowl was also scheduled for November 30, not the 23rd. At Legion Field in Birmingham, Number 9 Auburn beat Number 6 Alabama, 10-8.

In my home State of New Jersey, Rutgers was supposed to play Columbia University of New York City on the 23rd, at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway. It was postponed to the 28th, and Columbia won, 35-28. Only 5,000 people came out to the 23,000-seat stadium. Not surprising: Not only was it a holiday, with pretty much anybody who wanted to see a football game that day watching their hometown high school team, but the country was still very depressed, and neither team was any good: Rutgers came in at 3-5, Columbia at 3-4-1.

The other big college team in New Jersey, Princeton, was supposed to host Dartmouth at Palmer Stadium, in a game that would decide the Ivy League title. That one was postponed to the 30th, and, before a crowd of 35,000, Dartmouth won, 22-21.

Notre Dame, with no official connection to the nation's 1st Catholic President, but unofficially accepted as the nation's leading Catholic university, was supposed to visit the University of Iowa on the 23rd. That game was canceled outright, and never played.

East Brunswick High School, my alma mater, was supposed to play football on the Saturday, against neighboring Sayreville. The game was postponed, and, for the 1st time in the then-new school's 3-year football history, a game was played on Thanksgiving. E.B. won, 13-12.

When the announcement that JFK was dead reached us at 2:35 PM Eastern Time on November 22, it was a Friday afternoon, and decisions had to be made to play or postpone the following Sunday's professional football games. The AFL chose to postpone their games until the week after the close of the regular season, while the NFL chose to play as scheduled. Since November 24 turned out to be another significant day, I have an entry for that day, including those games.

November 8, 1960: John Fitzgerald Kennedy Is Elected President

November 8, 1960: Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts is elected the 35th President of the United States. At 43, he is the youngest man ever elected to the office, although Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he was first sworn in. He is also the 1st Catholic to achieve the office, and remains the only one.

He beats the Republican nominee, incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon. It is incredibly close: JFK wins 49.72 percent of the popular vote, Nixon 49.55, a margin of 118,000 votes. The Electoral Vote goes 303 to 219 for Kennedy (with 15 votes from Southern electors going elsewhere), making it look like it wasn't so close. The election was so close, comedian Mort Sahl said, "Neither of them is going to win."

Kennedy won Illinois by 8,858 votes. To this day, Republicans say JFK's friend, Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, "stole" the State's vote for him. There's just one problem with this theory: Even if it were true, it wouldn't have mattered. Winning Illinois would've changed the Electoral Vote from 303-219 Kennedy to 276-246 Kennedy, still above the threshold for a majority, which was then 269. Nor would winning Illinois have given Nixon the edge in the popular vote.

In addition, there are stories that the real reason Nixon didn't contest the Illinois vote is that he knew that Southern Illinois had seen vote-tampering in his favor. Indeed, only 1 State had a vote so close that, as with Florida in 2000, a legally-mandated recount kicked in. It was the newest State, Hawaii. And it did switch... from Nixon to Kennedy.

The Republicans actually did better in the Congressional elections, gaining 22 seats in the House, and 2 in the Senate.

The Kennedy campaign has been celebrated in many ways, from Theodore H. White's Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Making of the President 1960 to the various movies about JFK to the extensive exhibit at JFK's Presidential Library, on the waterfront of the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts.

Indeed, for all of his accomplishments, JFK will forever be remembered best for the way his Presidency began, with a legendary campaign for the office and a spectacular Inaugural Address; and for the way it ended, assassinated in public in broad daylight, with an official solution that remains not fully accepted by the American people.

Needing something to do after leaving the Vice Presidency, and not being President, Nixon wrote a memoir about his political experiences to that point. He titled it Six Crises. In addition to this election, he included the Alger Hiss case, what became known as the Checkers Speech, his role as "Acting President" after Eisenhower's 1955 heart attack, his ill-fated trip to South America in 1958, and his "Kitchen Debate" with Nikita Khrushchev in 1959.

*

November 8, 1960, like all modern U.S. Election Days, was a Tuesday. The baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. The NHL season had begun, but no games were scheduled for the day. But there was 1 NBA game. Somewhat appropriately, given JFK's win, Boston won this as well: The Boston Celtics beat the Cincinnati Royals, 136-120 at the Cincinnati Gardens.

For the Royals, Jack Twyman scored 32, and Oscar Robertson 31. But for the Celtics, Tom Heinsohn scored 33, Bob Cousy 30, and Bill Sharman 26. Bill Russell only scored 2, but had 15 rebounds. 

January 20, 1961: President John F. Kennedy Is Inaugurated

January 20, 1961: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a Bostonian who had served the previous 8 years in the U.S. Senate, and the 6 years before that in the U.S. House of Representatives, is inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States, on the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

(This had been the traditional site for the Inauguration since 1817. Since 1981, it has been done on the West Front of the Capitol.)

On November 8, 1960, as the Democratic Party's nominee for the office, he had narrowly defeated the Republican Party's nominee, the man who was then the Vice President, Richard Nixon, seeking to succeed Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 1st President who had been restricted to 2 terms by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

At 43, JFK (so often referred to by his initials) was the youngest man ever elected to the office. Theodore Roosevelt had been the youngest President to serve, just short of turning 43 when he was sworn into the office in 1901 following the assassination of William McKinley. However, when he won a term of his own, he was older than JFK was at his Inauguration.

Kennedy was sworn in by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Earl Warren. The new Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan who had been the Senate's Majority Leader, was sworn in by the Speaker of the House, John McCormack, like Kennedy a Bostonian. Outgoing President Eisenhower, outgoing Vice President Nixon, and former President Harry Truman were in attendance. (The other former President then still living, Herbert Hoover, 86 years old, was not.)

Earlier, Cardinal Richard Cushing, Archbishop of Kennedy's hometown of Boston, delivered the Invocation. (Kennedy was the 1st Roman Catholic to become President.) Marian Anderson, a black opera singer who famously sang at the Lincoln Memorial in a nationally broadcast concert on Easter 1939, following her denial of the chance to sing at Washington's Constitution Hall, sang the National Anthem. Robert Frost, like Kennedy a New Englander, read a poem for the occasion.

Kennedy had won by evoking a previous President known for his initials and his activism, FDR: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He had made the argument that the Eisenhower-Nixon Administration had stood still on the great issues of the time: Civil rights, health care, labor, and various issues relating to foreign policy. (At the time, the rights of women and LGBT people, the legal status of abortion, and the protection of the environment were almost totally ignored.) And his victory was a narrow one.

So he knew he needed an Inaugural Address which, like FDR's in 1933, would be both hopeful and unifying. Gerald Ford, then a Congressman from Michigan, was in attendance, and would eventually become President himself, with an Inaugural Address that, even more, needed to be hopeful and unifying. In an interview years after he left the White House, Ford said it was bitterly cold in Washington that day, following a big snowfall the night before, and the Capitol grounds had barely been cleared of snow. Ford remembered people sharing his hope that the address would be brief.

They got their wish: The delivery of the 1,366 words took 14 minutes. Kennedy began magnanimously: "We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change."

But the change from the 70-year-old, bald and terribly-old-looking Eisenhower to the 43-year-old, dark-haired, full of vigor -- or "vigah," in his accent -- Kennedy, whose wife Jacqueline was only 31 and whose children were then ages 3 years and 2 months, could not have been more stark.

And he pointed out the generational difference, that leadership of the country was passing from the commanders of World War II to its front-line fighters: "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world."

He knew that his experience and his maturity had been questioned during the 1960 campaign. So his next line was very determined -- but, in hindsight, perhaps a bit much: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge, and more."

In fact, the Address was almost completely devoted to America's relations with other nations, rather than to domestic affairs:

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share: We pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do, for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free: We pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom, and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery: We pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required, not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

To our sister republics south of our border: We offer a special pledge, to convert our good words into good deed, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace: We renew our pledge of support, to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary: We offer not a pledge, but a request: That both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.

It was ambitious, and it was idealistic. But Kennedy was also a realist, saying, "All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."

Kennedy had been a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II, ready to serve in spite of his physical infirmities, and forced by circumstance to save his men following a Japanese attack: When asked during his 1st campaign for Congress, in 1946, "How did you become a war hero?" he told the truth: "It was involuntary. They sank my boat."

Due to personal experience, he never forgot that war makes men do risky things, perhaps even terrible things, to assure the survival of their country. He thus wanted to make war as unnecessary as possible, especially now that both the United States and the Soviet Union possessed nuclear weapons. Every bit as much as the generations that fought for the patriot causes in the War of the American Revolution and the American Civil War, he knew that his generation, the one that fought World War II, had been forced to step in at a grave moment.

And he knew that moment was not over, because a new generation was coming up, and would have to face difficult times and home and abroad. So he spoke to that generation as well:

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility, I welcome it!

I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it, and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

Those words should have lived forever. They lived all of 5 seconds, because of what he said next, to being his closing:

And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world: Ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you.

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that, here on Earth, God's work must truly be our own.

Along with the 2 Inaugural Addresses of Abraham Lincoln, and the 1st of FDR, JFK is regarded as having produced -- with notable help from speechwriters Theodore C. Sorenson and Richard Goodwin -- one of the greatest Inaugural Address of any President.

Kennedy's time as President was, as Theodore Roosevelt would have put it, a "crowded hour." But in spite of all he did, and tried to do, he is remembered today mainly for two things: The way his Presidency began, with a legendary campaign and an epic Inaugural Address; and the way his Presidency ended, with an assassin's bullets in broad daylight.

*

January 20, 1961 was a Friday. It was the off-season for baseball. The NFL season had ended 3 weeks before, with the NFL and AFL Championship Games (won by the Philadelphia Eagles and the Houston Oilers, respectively). There were no NHL games scheduled for the day.

And only 1 NBA game was: The Detroit Pistons beat the New York Knicks, 132-128 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. Richie Guerin scored 35 points for the Knickerbockers, but it wasn't enough, as Bailey Howell scored 29, and Gene Shue, who would coach the Washington Bullets to the 1978 NBA Championship, added 26.